Scott said he woke up around 7 a.m., and a few minutes later came the crash.

He'd just woken up, and his wife, Karen, was at work.

"Usually I come in that living room, I would have," Scott said.

"It just happened before I got in there, and somebody could have been killed."

Karen Scott said their granddaughter often plays on their computer at a table by the window the van smashed through, and said there's no way the small girl could have survived the collision had she been there when it happened.

The Scotts said the driver was also fortunate to survive.

"It looked like he was [in bad shape]; he was bleeding pretty bad out here," Phillip said.

Tire tracks show the van hopped the curb and passed within inches of a sign post.

It kept going more than a tenth of a mile, down the embankment, through some brush, and into the side of the house. Karen Scott said when she heard about the crash, she was much more concerned for the driver than her home.

"Yeah, yeah, i don't want anybody to be hurt. They said he had collapsed lungs and his ribs was broken and they flew him on to Erlanger [Hospital in Chattanooga]," she said.

The driver's nephew came and talked to her about insurance and taking care of damage.

The crash broke water pipes, took out the gas line, pulled down the satellite dish, and knocked the house about a foot off the foundation, but the Scotts are staying positive.

"It'll be alright, we'll just find another place to live and just go on," Karen Scott said.

Rainsville police are investigating the cause and say the driver may have fallen asleep.